Throughout history, individuals have needed to congregate together to collaboratively create, review and discuss various types of media, such as works of art, literature, business projects, etc. One exemplary domain where such collaboration has occurred is the classroom. Classroom instruction may be effective, but it is often difficult, costly and at times inconvenient to arrange for many people from disparate locations to meet together for educational (or business) purposes. To solve the problem of bringing people together, complex technologies have been developed to facilitate distributed learning. One such technology uses satellite broadcasts or other closed-circuit links to provide two-way video and audio communication between an instructor at a broadcast center with audience members at one or more remote classrooms. However, this solution is less than ideal since it requires specialized hardware to be present at the instructor's location, as well as at each classroom.
Today, many people have embraced the “information age” and depend upon multimedia devices to provide them with a means to receive current information, as well as the ability to communicate with other people. Many homes now include at least one personal computer and television. In addition, many people own set-top boxes (STBs) for controlling cable-received media for their televisions, as well as DVD players, scanners and software for enabling their personal computers and televisions to be used as multimedia communication devices (hereinafter referred to as “appliances”). Currently, these (and other) personal multimedia devices function to only store and display multimedia content. There is no mechanism that permits a disparate group of individuals (hereinafter referred to as “participants”) to collaboratively view copies of the same multimedia content that is stored on multiple appliances.